Thank you for visiting! I'll keep this one brief. My robotics career has spanned 20 years, beginning after my Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. Over that time, I've worked at early stage startups that no longer exist, academic / industry partnerships, one startup that was successfully acquired, and the company that acquired it.
Those experiences all led me to start my first startup (actually, I started two companies, but that's a topic for a different post), Neya Systems, in 2009. At Neya, I focused on building a company to address the growing use of robotics and autonomy for defense. 2009 was before the huge boom in funding for commercial robotics and machine learning, and so I decided to bootstrap this company. I did it for a variety of reasons, but fundamentally, I wanted the ability to fully control my destiny, and maintain 100% ownership of the company.
This was a challenging approach, but ultimately a successful one. I was able to grow the company, attract some of the smartest minds in outdoor mobile robotics to join us, and build amazing technology in a variety of autonomy areas. In 2017, I sold the company to Applied Research Associates.
Along the way, I've learned a lot that I want to share. Specifically, in this blog I'll talk about:
Managing and growing a bootstrapped robotics startup
Business to Government sales
Robotics technology trends
Teaching and mentoring
I hope some of what I've learned over the last 20 years is valuable to you! I look forward to comments and feedback.
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